60 Minutes’ Africa ‘problem’

The media’s narrative in Africa typically falls into at least one of three narrow categories, according to Columbia Journalism School associate professor Howard French: Immense Catastrophe, White Protagonists, or Wildlife.

CBS’ 60 Minutes hit on all three in recent months, prompting French–previously a New York Times west and central Africa correspondent–to send 60 Minutes’ executive producer Jeff Fager a letter Wednesday criticizing the show’s coverage. The letter was co-signed by more than 150 journalists, writers, and academics from the US and Africa.

“60 Minutes has managed, quite extraordinarily, to render people of black African ancestry voiceless and all but invisible,” he wrote, calling on CBS to “rethink its approach to Africa.” For French, the tipping point came while watching a recent 60 Minutes segment on a British multimillionaire who took a family of 10 gorillas from a zoo in Britain and released them in Gabon earlier this month. That story followed a 60 Minutes segment from last November on a white South African animal behaviorist and “lion whisperer,” as well as a report on Ebola from Lara Logan in which seemingly no Africans were interviewed.

Kevin Richardson, the South African “lion whisperer” on 60 Minutes

The situation has since escalated. A 60 Minutes spokesman said: “60 Minutes is proud of its coverage of Africa and has received considerable recognition for it. We have reached out to Mr. French to invite him to discuss this further and we look forward to meeting with him.”

In an interview with CJR, French responded: “I told them I would be happy to speak with them, but the only basis for sincere conversation that I can detect would be engaging on the points of my letter, and they have not done that. I’m not trying to get an invitation to their office. I’m trying to engage a discussion about very specific points of criticism.”

Those points of criticism are not confined to 60 Minutes, but apply to the way Western media covers Africa generally. Internationally, the boom of certain South American or Asian economies, for example, have made those nations increasingly relevant to American financial interests, with media coverage subsequently improving. In Africa, that’s largely not yet the case. “Africa coverage lags, in my view, behind every other major region of the world,” French said. “Money compels attention, and to some degree it compels respect.”

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Yet even if it takes economic clout to draw eyeballs and thus nuanced reporting, in Africa there is a disconnect between media coverage and the continent’s growth, although publications like Quartz are beginning to take notice. “Africa today as a continent is—depending on whose estimate you take—growing roughly as fast or perhaps faster than Asia, economically speaking. Africa today, depending on whose definition of middle class you accept, has more middle class people than India,” said French. “Africa is urbanizing faster than any other part of the world. We get lots of stories about urbanization in China—and we should. We don’t get those stories about urbanization in Africa.”

Money compels attention, and to some degree it compels respect.

Essentially, there is no counter-narrative. And the media can fall into a vicious cycle of perpetuating the same tired stories—tragic disaster, foreign saviors, exotic animals—while assuming this is all that piques their audience’s interest. “There’s a failure, deliberate or not, on the part of the editors and producers who run the media to engage with the notion that it’s actually them who condition the interest of the readers and the viewers,” said French. “That’s why I did a public letter. I think that the news media suffers under this illusion that this is what the public wants and they’re simply passively doing their job, serving up the normal order of things.”

As international news bureaus around the world close and publications become more reliant on freelancers, nuanced reporting that is willing to challenge the conventional African narrative is also at risk.

But for now, French’s focus is squarely on CBS. “I’m going to go archivally through CBS 60 Minutes’ work on Africa. Because I’ve been watching the show—for better or for worse—for decades, and I don’t remember any particular segments that get outside of the boxes of what I’m talking about,” said French. “They say they’re proud of their coverage in Africa. I want to go back and see what they have to be proud of.”

The letter—with the most recent list of signatories—is below:

March 25, 2015

Jeff Fager, Executive Producer, CBS 60 Minutes (by email)

Dear Mr. Fager,

We, the undersigned, are writing to express our grave concern about the frequent and recurring misrepresentation of the African continent by 60 Minutes.

In a series of recent segments from the continent, 60 Minutes has managed, quite extraordinarily, to render people of black African ancestry voiceless and all but invisible.

Two of these segments were remarkably similar in their basic subject matter, featuring white people who have made it their mission to rescue African wildlife. In one case these were lions, and in another, apes. People of black African descent make no substantial appearance in either of these reports, and no sense whatsoever is given of the countries visited, South Africa and Gabon.

The third notable recent segment was a visit by your correspondent Lara Logan to Liberia to cover the Ebola epidemic in that country. In that broadcast, Africans were reduced to the role of silent victims. They constituted what might be called a scenery of misery: people whose thoughts, experiences and actions were treated as if totally without interest. Liberians were shown within easy speaking range of Logan, including some Liberians whom she spoke about, and yet not a single Liberian was quoted in any capacity.

Liberians not only died from Ebola, but many of them contributed bravely to the fight against the disease, including doctors, nurses and other caregivers, some of whom gave their lives in this effort. Despite this, the only people heard from on the air were white foreigners who had come to Liberia to contribute to the fight against the disease.

Taken together, this anachronistic style of coverage reproduces, in condensed form, many of the worst habits of modern American journalism on the subject of Africa. To be clear, this means that Africa only warrants the public’s attention when there is disaster or human tragedy on an immense scale, when Westerners can be elevated to the role of central characters, or when it is a matter of that perennial favorite, wildlife. As a corollary, Africans themselves are typically limited to the role of passive victims, or occasionally brutal or corrupt villains and incompetents; they are not otherwise shown to have any agency or even the normal range of human thoughts and emotions. Such a skewed perspective not only disserves Africa, it also badly disserves the news viewing and news reading public.

We have taken the initiative of writing to you because we are mindful of the reach of 60 Minutes, and of the important role that your program has long played in informing the public. We are equally mindful that American views of Africa, a continent of 1.1 billion people, which is experiencing rapid change on an immense scale, are badly misinformed by much of the mainstream media. The great diversity of African experience, the challenges and triumphs of African peoples, and above all, the voices and thoughts of Africans themselves are chronically and woefully underrepresented.

Over the coming decades, Africa will become the backdrop of some of the most significant developments on the planet, from unprecedented population growth, urbanization and economic change to, potentially, the wholesale reconfiguration of states. We would like see to 60 Minutes rethink its approach to Africa, and rise to the challenge of covering topics like these, and many more, that go well beyond the bailiwick of the staid and stereotypical recent examples cited above. In doing so, 60 Minutes will have much to gain, as will the viewing public.

Howard W. French

Associate Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Author of China’s Second Continent and A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa

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